MusicGremlin. new technology for flopping. well, well.

Largehearted Boy pointed me in the direction of this new mp3 player called MusicGremlin. i read the article, which you can read here, and suddenly got excited - an alternative to the iPod that actually sounds pretty damn good.

Today, a small New York City company called MusicGremlin Inc. is rolling out a fresh approach to denting the iPod hegemony: the wireless music player. Its new $299 Gremlin portable player has built-in Wi-Fi wireless networking, so it can download songs from an accompanying subscription service directly, without requiring the use of a personal computer.

Not only that, but Gremlin users can wirelessly exchange entire songs right from their players, legally, as long as both the sender and receiver are subscribers to the MusicGremlin Direct service, which costs $14.99 a month. This process, called "beaming," allows you to share songs with your Gremlin-toting pals, no matter where they are, without ever using a computer or a CD burner. You can even peer into other users' Gremlins to see what they're playing and what they've downloaded, and pluck any song you like from their devices, if they give you permission.

now. i'm not an iPod hater. i had a non-click wheel one long before the hype, and shamelessly threw it in everyone's face after they started getting their minis and click wheels (oh yeah, i'm one of those). now i have a video one, and it plays me videos, and has the neat little picture of the album when a track is playing. it's my friend on the T and plane rides. i like friends. i like iPods. i like Apple, for that matter.

but i don't like iTunes. i don't like monopolies - strong holds on any particular market scare me. and if there is one thing Mac seriously did correctly, it was gaining king-of-the-hill status in the digital music world - and thusly the digital music player. i don't know, is that right? can't we give other things a chance? must we all be lemmings? "Suzy has an iPod nano. everyone likes Suzy. i want an iPod nano, too." i suppose that example works for everything from an iPod to a Tamagotchi to a particular brand of hair elastic (man, grade school was so sick). but it also works for 52-year-olds sitting down and watching television, seeing an iPod commercial and going from "kids these days," to "hey, i used to like U2," to "it costs what??" to "son/daughter, i bought myself this gadget, can you show me how it works?" to "honey, i'm sorry, i racked up $145 worth of songs on iTunes this morning." soon they're cooking dinner with their iPod on, swinging their hips and humming loudly to nostalgic 60's oldies and 80's Top 40 and James Blunt.

...but this player won't get anywhere. first of all, it doesn't work with a Mac, and guess what i own? and guess what the grand majority of kids going to college in the next five to ten years are going to get? and guess what is still better looking, better marketed, and better situated to the point of all hopeless competition? yep. you bet. Macs. iPods. oh well.

how do you like my token iPod and Musicgremlin pictures? you can thank Amazon. also, if you'd like to take the new gadget into consideration, you can buy it here, or through Amazon, here.  shan  9:35 AM  |  view comments (2)